Ben Affleck reveals his Hollywood friends wouldn't return his calls when his films flopped

Ben Affleck has reflected on the time when his Hollywood friends wouldn't return his phone calls after his films had flopped as he looked back on what he deemed his 'Hollywood moment'.

In a chat on Travis and Jason Kelce's New Heights podcast this week, the actor, 54, recalled the moment in his film career when he suddenly 'wasn't cool' and struggled to get work, which made him realise who his real friends were. 

Throughout 2003-2004, Ben starred in a number of box office flops, most notably his biggest financial disaster – Gigli – with the critically-mauled film raking in just $7million worldwide amid a $75million budget. 

Following this dark period in his career, Ben made a major career comeback with 2006's Hollywoodland followed by his feature film directorial debut Gone Baby Gone in 2007. His second directorial outing, The Town in 2010, also proved a success and  cemented his impressive Hollywood redemption.

As he explained that in his profession 'nothing's permanent', Ben shared: 'There's no tenure, there's no gold watch, there's no seniority, people won't go see your movie and that's it, phone stops ringing. When I got successful I just did one movie after another, as fast as I could, I was scared that it was going to go away. And ironically, it kind of became a self-fulfilling prophecy.

'I did a couple of movies in a row that just bombed and all of a sudden, I wasn't cool. Nobody wanted to see my movies and I couldn't get a job. 

'And what I experienced was all of these people... who I thought were my friends, didn't want to talk to me, they wouldn't return my calls, they like avoided me! And I realised that, oh ok, that was the Hollywood moment where I was like, these people really aren't your friends.'

He continued: 'I got my friends, that's not what this is. This is something else. It doesn't mean it's bad or wrong it just means that I need to understand what a lot of this is based on, if being next to you makes you cool or makes you look good or can get you something then people want to do that. And if it doesn't? F**k you! It's the truth.'

Ben then reflected on the huge pivot in his career when he found success with his film The Town, which was a commercial success, grossing $154million worldwide, while star Jeremy Renner bagged an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor.

The thespian noted that amid the buzz surrounding the gritty Boston crime thriller and his subsequent resurgence, he suddenly began receiving calls from those who snubbed him – but he chose to take the high road.

He continued: 'And when it came back, it took me a few years, that's when I started directing, I was like Ok I'm really gonna try to get back to something on my own terms. If I'm gonna fail, I want it to at least be on my own terms and my own idea of what's good. 

After the second movie that I directed, that I was in, when it came out I remember speaking to my agent... in those days that Saturday morning when you read the reviews you knew whether it was gonna be a hit or not basically. And I knew, on that Saturday, I got like 10 phone calls from people I hadn't heard from in three or four years. 

'I was telling my agent "can you f**king believe this?!" and he was like "hey, we're gonna welcome back all of your old friends" and I was like "OK". It's not about that, holding a grudge, just understand what it is, don't get overinflated, keep an even keel and know where you are.

'The world is one day treating you one way and one day treating you another. You can't be attached to that or it'll make you crazy.'

Back in 2022, Ben called his box office bomb a 'gift' as it steered him towards trying his hand at directing, while it also introduced him to his ex Jennifer Lopez. 

In an interview for Entertainment Weekly, conducted by his best pal Matt Damon, Ben said: '[Gigli] didn't work and we did five weeks of reshoots, which we knew were not gonna work. It was a movie that didn't work....' 

'It's just that it became a story in and of itself. The funny name, the Jennifer Lopez romance and overexposure of that, it was kind of a perfect storm,' he adds. 

'And I remember talking to Marty [Brest] the Friday it came out and I was like it's just spectacular, it's a tsunami, it couldn't be worse. This is as bad as it gets.'

Though, while Ben said the process and the reaction to the movie was 'depressing' and made him feel 'disappointed and have a lot of self-doubt' there were also a few positive outcomes.

'But if the reaction to Gigli hadn't happened, I probably wouldn't have ultimately decided, "I don't really have any other avenue but to direct movies", which has turned out to be the real love of my professional life. So in those ways, it's a gift.'

'And I did get to meet Jennifer, the relationship with whom has been really meaningful to me in my life,' he mused.